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Ainu is the oldest known language to exist in the archipelago - it's a lot more likely that the people of the Jomon era (a far longer period of time than the post-Yayoi period) including the inhabitants of places like Sannai-Maruyama, were speaking it than anything like modern Japanese.
Indeed, after the Yayoi era, and for a long time afterwards, large parts of what is now Japan remained under Ainu control - northern Honshu was only gradually occupied over the course of several centuries, and Hokkaido was (mostly) holding out until the 19th century.
(Ironically, most cities in Hokkaido, such as Sapporo, seem to echo the kind of colonial architecture and city layout used by the British and others in places like western Canada and Australia - which were colonised in the same era. Only Hakodate is much older, and even it was not much of anything before the colonial period.)
Ainu is a living link to a part of the islands' history (and pre-history) that has been discriminated against, ignored and sidelined by Yamato-centric policies for far, far too long - in an unfortunate echo of the treatment that indigenous peoples from the Aborigines of Australia to the First Nations of Canada and elsewhere have been forced to endure (but, thankfully, have been at least addressed more fairly in recent years in those countries)... and it's long past time that these issues were addressed.
But then, I suppose it's somewhat ironic that today, I find the kind of dismissive attitude by some towards Anew be echoed towards Ainu... sigh.
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